


Tethered to You Across All These Years

by slidingkinsey



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Peggy but only in chapter 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3164072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slidingkinsey/pseuds/slidingkinsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Buchanan Barnes is a guy from Brooklyn who just happens to enjoy hanging around with this other guy from Brooklyn, but since the chances of him surviving this war aren't looking all the great, it doesn't really matter anyway, does it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Girl Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [eden22](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eden22/pseuds/eden22) for being such a great beta and going above and beyond by fixing all my dashes/hyphens

He never thought he'd see Steve on the front lines. At first he'd imagined him and Steve roaming New York, just the two of them in a sea of women. They'd help out with the war effort somehow. Steve would make sure of it. And Bucky would set them up with dates every Friday night. He was man enough to admit he loved the way both girls would always hang off of him, Steve just trailing along behind and acting the gentleman. Every once and a while there would be a girl who thought Steve was sweet, though, and Bucky would always make sure to play it up, ruffling Steve's hair and hugging him close with one arm around his shoulder. If a girl was into the adorable thing, Bucky was going to make damn sure Steve was adorable as hell.

He could never tell what Steve thought of the girls. It wasn't like he didn't care. Ask Steve two weeks later and he could still tell you all about a girl's grandmother and how her typing course was going. Steve cared about the girls; he just never seemed to care if they were his girls.

But once Bucky was drafted, he knew that was all out. Steve would be stuck in a city full of women, wishing he was dying on the front like an idiot, and Bucky would be dying on the front like an idiot, dreaming of women in Brooklyn. He did get a laugh out of the whole thing sometimes, thinking of Steve as his girl back home. He even writes Steve a couple of letters like that, even signs them "love Bucky", but he doesn't send them. He's worried Steve won't get the joke.

He hopes Steve's staying out of trouble, but knowing Steve, he's probably getting his ass kicked worse than they are over here, knee-deep in mud and Germans.

Honestly Bucky hates the mud more than the Germans. Some of the Germans are, well, Steve'd call them bullies and Bucky's mom woulda called them evil. But some of the others, they’re just kids. Younger than Bucky and small as Steve and pale as paper in their uniforms.

But the mud is everywhere, always, and when things got bad it mixed with the blood and smelled like the bodies and it seemed worse, so much worse, than the Germans, as if Adolf Hitler himself was in the ground somehow, poisonous and rank. He understood why sometimes guys on the front lost it.

And then he was captured.

He tries not to think too much about what happened to him there. There was plenty he didn't remember, and he was happy to keep it that way. To let it all be overshadowed by the moment when Steve appeared beside him, unmistakably Steve despite how absurdly tall and broad he was, like someone had crossed Steve with a brick wall.

Which turned out to be pretty close to the truth.

It’s a long walk back to the front, and with so many wounded it was slow progress. He’s surprised by how strong he still is, muscles still as lean and capable as when he'd finished basic training. But he gets dizzy suddenly sometimes, and Steve, this new ridiculous Steve, scrambles to find him extra food and water (neither of which they really have) and insists he sits down and rests, as if Bucky was the one who needed taking care of.

Bucky also can't sleep. He volunteers for watch duty every night, and he and Steve sit together, talking quietly about Brooklyn as the sun goes down. Steve always sleeps for a few hours around midnight, curled on the ground or leaning his head back against the tree he’s propped up against. He doesn't seem to get cold like he used to. Bucky sits staring into the dark and listening to him breathing, trying to memorize the new rhythm of it.

When they get back to camp, though, he can't keep pretending that Steve saved him and everything would be okay. The mud is still there, and the Germans, and this Hydra whatever (and some very pissed off superior officers).

So when they finally get out of that circus, debriefed and showered and fed, they go straight to a bar.

Bucky knows that Steve is going back, and he stays at the bar when Steve goes in to talk to the other men. He wants to put off for as long as possible the moment when he commits to walking back into his nightmares, albeit with bigger guns this time.

He's already said yes by the time Peggy shows up. Peggy Carter, a bombshell in every sense of the word, and she's looking at Steve like he's Christmas dinner.

It's like someone turned the world upside down, and to catch his breath he teases Steve, pushes all the buttons he knows will bring out the Steve he knows, the Steve who blushes over pinups and brings home kittens they can't keep.

The next day Steve goes out to do secret stuff with Stark, and Bucky strips and reassembles all his new guns, making sure they're perfect, because they have to protect him and Steve.

When Steve gets back there's a kind of nervous energy pouring off him that Bucky can't place. He watches Steve pace for a while, until he can't take it anymore.

"What happened?"

Steve shakes his head and doesn't stop pacing.

"Has there been some kind of attack? Something wrong with the men? Did Stark-"

"Agent Carter shot at me."

Bucky's jaw drops and then snaps shut. He eyes Steve suspiciously. "You don't look shot."

"I had a shield! And she didn't shoot shoot me, she was just, I think, she saw the Private kiss me-"

" _Who_?" Bucky interrupts.

"Private Lorraine! Blonde lady? She just grabbed my tie all of a sudden – I mean I didn't mean to kiss her."

Bucky can't help it anymore. He doubles over with laughter.

"Not funny, Buck!"

"Pretty goddamned hilarious," he says, wiping his eyes and gasping for breath. "She still mad?"

"I don't know," Steve admits. He sits down heavily on a chair that creaks alarmingly.

Bucky composes himself a little and stares at Steve. "You're really gone on her huh?"

"She's--" Steve swallows. "She's really something, Buck."

"Huh," Bucky says, letting that settle for a minute, wondering at the icy feeling in his stomach. He shakes his head and slaps Steve on the shoulder. "Better stop making time with _Private Lorraine_ , then!"

Steve glares at him and he laughs.

Things move fast then. They’re deployed, and their missions are desperate and dangerous and a hell of a lot more fun than the war had been before. Hydra is a lot more like people back home made the Germans out to be: well-organized and closer to devils than men half the time. But they still spend most of their time in the mud and the rain and the ice, just like any poor bastard in the trenches, and Bucky takes to huddling close to Steve, who never seems cold, only peeling himself away to take up position with his rifle.

Every once and a while they find themselves back at a base where they can shower and eat and sleep and restock properly, and Steve gets whisked off to consult with Philips and Peggy. He comes back with new orders and an absurd smile on his face every time.

Sometimes Peggy will come and find Bucky, and he watches the way she watches him, all curious, and asks questions as if he’s the last missing piece in the puzzle of understanding understanding Steve Rogers. Sometimes he wants to tell her not to bother, that it’ll never make sense, how _Steve_ Steve is. 

It’s a cold morning when she finds Bucky sprawled on the ground by his tent, eating an apple he won in a card game. He cuts it in two and gives her half as she launches into a story of Steve in training (which Bucky is sorry he didn’t get to see, because it sounds hilarious). As she’s leaving, she presses a locket into his hand, the same locket he’d helped Steve pick out last time they’d been back to civilization. 

"I want you to have that, you understand me, Barnes?" she says, cutting off whatever objection he'd been about to make. "You keep him safe for both of us."

That night Bucky sews the locket into the lining of his shirt, promising himself he'll give it back to Peggy when he sees her next, and the next morning they leave before dawn, Gabe and Dernier chattering away in French and whooping into the dark.

There are moments when Bucky really thinks Steve, his Steve, is gone, really gone, swallowed up by this costumed man who outranks him. Moments when Bucky feels like throwing up, deserting, stepping in front of a bullet – anything but staring at Steve's face and seeing a stranger. He starts writing Steve letters again, like at the beginning, but the joke doesn't seem so funny now, with Steve sitting just a little ways away chatting with the Commandos, and his hand shakes sometimes on the "love Bucky".

And sometimes he's jealous. He hates himself for it, but it's real, it's there, curling and uncurling in the pit of his stomach. He's always known, always feared that Steve is better than him. Just better somehow, down to his bones, and now that fact’s clear to anyone who sees them: a hero with a flag for a shield, and his sad little shadow who sometimes wakes up screaming.

Mostly though, thank God or whoever’s in charge of these things, it’s Steve next to him, familiar as the streets of Brooklyn. Steve blushing and telling him about travelling with all those chorus girls while Bucky cackles. Steve getting all worked up as if the whole war was just a back alley brawl with some asshole. Steve sitting crouched over his sketchbook, drawing the Commandos in quick precise lines while Falsworth yells that he’d better be making them all pretty. Steve sleeping next to him close enough to touch. If he wanted to.

One night they set up camp in an abandoned inn, and discover a small cache of wine under the floorboards. Steve tells them to go ahead, and carefully tucks a small wallet of money into the space before he replaces the floorboards.

They drink too fast, knowing that they're only being extracted tomorrow to be deployed elsewhere, an even more dangerous mission but one that might at least hit Hydra where it hurts. The wine is gone before it's fully dark, and Steve only hushes them half-heartedly when they start singing, knowing the area is as safe as it gets. Morita passes out early on, half-on and half-off his bed roll. Dernier and Dum Dum become involved in an impromptu, very drunk French lesson while Bucky, Steve, Falsworth, and Gabe play a few hands of cards with Gabe’s battered deck. Dernier and Falsworth succumb to sleep next, and Gabe challenges Dum Dum to an arm wrestling match. Bucky cheers them on until they tire, and then tries to convince them to dance, but they laugh him off, climbing into the loft where they plan to sleep instead.

Bucky climbs up onto the table where Steve's sitting, hooking his feet into either side of Steve's chair.

"You alright there Buck?" Steve asks, looking amused. Bucky snorts, knowing Steve's laughing at his loose limbs and flushed face.

"Happy for you," he mutters. He reaches forward and wraps his fingers in the collar of Steve's jacket.

"Buck," Steve says.

"Shut up Steve," Bucky says, scooting forward. The locket in the lining of his shirt hits him lightly in the chest. "You can't even get drunk." He studies Steve's face, that same nose and those same stupidly long eyelashes. Same eyes. He knows he'll remember that forever, Steve's face, all Steve's faces, until he dies. Maybe even after that.

Steve stands up suddenly, scooping Bucky up and holding him close to his chest. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve's impossible shoulders and lets himself be carried to where their bedrolls are already laid out.

Steve lays them down together, and Bucky braces for the chill when Steve lets go. But it doesn’t come, and Steve’s arms stay around him as he tugs the blankets over them both and tucks his face into Bucky's neck. He breathes in once, deep, so deep Bucky thinks he might be crying, but it’s only once, and the wine sweeps Bucky into sleep before he can think too much about it.

They’re woken the next morning by Dernier throwing up in a bucket, and Bucky stumbles around helping break camp as best he can with his head pounding. 

Their ride arrives on time for once, and then they’re pulling away from the ground, everything getting smaller, and the Commandos jostle and shove so much trying to settle in that their pilot yells at them. Bucky finds himself pressed up against Steve’s side and startles at how perfectly he fits there. Steve must see it on his face, because he looks at Bucky questioningly. 

“We’d better get a move on,” he says, flashing Steve his best grin. “We’ve got a train to catch.”


	2. The Other Man

He falls from the helicarrier, and he remembers falling. Remembers the cold of the snow as he hits the cold surface of the water.

He swims easily, despite the way his arm never seems to work properly in water. Another time, another place, there was a water tank and a furious man instructing him to “Grip. Release.”, cursing when the metal of his fingers locked up and spasmed.

Here, now, the other man sinks. He’s unconscious, he realizes, and the thought fills him with panic.

_I knew him._

The other man is heavy, heavier than he looks even. He strikes out for the shore, lips thinning every time his arm sputters in the water under the weight of the other man. He knows from experience that whatever damage has to be repaired will most likely be painful.

It’s obvious he can’t stay here. He isn’t entirely certain which agencies were involved in this mission, but he’s clearly attracted attention. Don’t get caught is always the first rule.

The other man is a burden. He dumps him on the river bank and focusses. He’s soaking wet, he’s clearly been in a fight, he doesn’t have any way to conceal his arm, and he’s still much too close to the scene.

First: distance. He follows the shoreline, knowing blockades will spring up first on major roadways. He has to stay off the roads and out of sight for now.

He flexes and shakes his arm as he walks, trying to dry it properly, and starts stripping off his wet clothes as he comes across a path and follows it up.

He drops his weapons along with all his outer clothes. He doesn’t need them right now. He keeps on the move, slinking through backyards when he reaches them, cutting across lots and edging around houses.

Finally he gets to one of the houses he’d scouted the day before. Owners away, no pets. Just in case. He’s easing himself in through a back window in a matter of minutes.

A hot shower, hot enough that it stings his chilled skin. He towels off roughly, and then dries his arm meticulously. He finds some clothes in the back of a closet that look like they were last used for painting and dresses himself.

He cleans up, erasing as much of his presence as he can, and lets himself out with half the change that was sitting in a bowl on top of one of the dressers.

He catches a bus and rides it downtown, and uses the rest of the change to buy a cheeseburger. He eats hunched over a McDonald’s table, baseball cap pulled low, wet hair curling against his neck, metal hand tucked into his jacket sleeve and hidden under the table.

He waits for someone to come retrieve him. It will be bad that he failed, but they’ll let him try again.

No one comes.

He walks to a nearby park and dozes on a bench for a while, only taking off when a couple of cops look like they’re headed towards him. He’s walking slowly through downtown, hungry and wondering where the best place to beg would be, when he walks right by the other man’s face, larger than life on the side of a building.

It’s the Smithsonian, and he remembers that that’s a museum, he thinks. Which means he would need admission.

He ends up down in the subway, which he doesn't mind. It's loud and crowded but there's only a few entrances and exits to keep an eye on and enough places to hide if he needs to.

He gets a dollar bill early on and some loose change, and then it's slow progress. He pockets the bill and keeps a critical eye on the coin in the baseball cap in front of him. It would be enough for a cheap meal, but he doesn't know if it'll be enough for the museum. He knows he forgets sometimes, how much things cost . Maybe because he moves around so much.

When he thinks he should have enough, with maybe a bit extra, he shoves it all in his pockets and climbs back up to the surface. The museum isn't hard to find, not with the other man's face staring down at him, and he jams his hat back onto his head. He picks out the security measures almost unconsciously as he approaches and walks through the doors.

Where he's greeted by a metal detector.

He almost walks out. Except.

_I knew him._

"Excuse me," he said, edging his way over to one of the security guards. "I, uh, I have a prosthetic." He holds up his hand, careful to hold his fingers fairly still.

The guard looks him up and down before responding. "You a vet? We've been getting a lot lately, for the Commandos exhibit."

He makes a vague noise, hoping it'll sound like whatever she wants to hear, unable to make sense of what she's saying.

"Troy," she calls, turning towards the other security guard. "Over here a minute. Troy's going to help us out, ok?"

He nods hesitantly, trying not to panic.

"Hi there," Troy says, sounding bored. "We're just going to do a quick pat down for you and then you can go on in, okay?"

"Okay," he says, feeling the room starting to fade out and the tension in his body start ratcheting up.

Troy runs his hands disinterestedly down his limbs and torso, barely making contact. "Anything in your pockets?" he asks.

He displays his handful of change.

"Go ahead," Troy said, letting him bypass the detector. He walks through in a daze. Behind him he hears Troy mutter to the other guard, "Pain in my ass is what it is."

There's a line, so he gets in it, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the high-ceilinged foyer. When he gets to the front he's greeted by a cheerful woman sitting behind a wicket.

"Hi! Are you interested in a tour today?"

"No," he says, pulling out his change again. "Just to go in. One to go in."

"Admission’s free, dear," she says, face softening. "Is there a particular exhibit you were interested in?"

"That one," he says, pointing at a little booklet with the other man on it.

"Captain America!" she says, "Lovely! If you just go straight down there and up the stairs, you'll see the signs."

He nods stiffly and walks off, hands in his pockets. He finds the stairs easily enough, and at the top, just like she said, another picture of the other man–and him.

_I KNEW HIM._

He sucks in a few shallow breaths. There's some writing, but he can't read it, has to blink over and over again before it stops swimming in front of his eyes.

_Sergeant James "Bucky" Buchanan Barnes_

_James_ , he mouths silently, trying it out, then, _Barnes_.

_Bucky_.

That one seems to fit a bit better, he thinks, but it doesn't sound like him. More like the name of somebody he used to know.

A man jostles him as he and his family go past, walking into the exhibit, and he schools his body into stillness for a few minutes before he follows them.

What's inside the exhibit is… familiar. It feels like maybe he read a book about these men and women, a long time ago. Except there's his face, or kind of his face, a younger face, staring back at him from newsreel and photographs.

He tugs his hat lower, adopts the slouch that he knows makes people avert their eyes. He moves away, to another part of the exhibit that’s focused on the other man. _Steven Grant Rogers_ , he reminds himself, staring at the words written on the wall as if he can burn them into his brain.

There's one picture that's not like the other ones. The placard on the wall next to it says it's Rogers in basic training, before he was selected as a test subject for the serum. Bucky stares at the thin pointed lines of his face, and his eyes, fierce even in the old photograph.   
Something warm shoots through his body.

Suddenly he's sure he's in danger in here. He moves casually, gets his back against a wall, and scans the vicinity. Nothing seems off, but his adrenaline is spiking higher and he can feel the tension in the joints of his arm increasing. He breathes slowly and maps out his route to the exit in his head before he takes his first step.

Outside it's later, much later than he thought, and the panic amps up. He should have been retrieved by now. Something's wrong.


	3. We Used to Go on Dates

The first thing he does when he wakes up is short-circuit the arm again. Then he rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling and recites what he can remember.

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes. People call me Bucky. I used to live in Brooklyn but it was a long time ago. I fought in the Second World War. I used to know a man named Steven Grant Rogers."

That's as far as he gets, most mornings. Trying to remember more is usually like trying to hold his hand to a hot stove, but sometimes he has moments of clarity and he'll remember a face or a street or what he likes to eat.

Food is expensive now. Everything is. He steals a lot, and that makes him uneasy. The world doesn't seem to match up with what he remembers, or to what he's been told, and it's like he's seeing double. Or triple.

The arm has to be short-circuited every few hours. He's thought about cutting it off, but he doesn't know what would happen if he tried. Sometimes he gets terrified that he's all metal inside, that the arm is just the only part he can see, that they made him and he's not real.

One morning he rips his shirt climbing through the skylight of the warehouse where he's been staying. It's his only shirt, the same paint-spattered shirt from that house that day by the river, so he hunts around the place for a bit of string and then carves himself a little wooden needle. It's good having things to do, and the needle comes out nicely. It's slow work with only one hand, but he has the tear halfway sewn up, in neat stitches, when he hears someone come in through the warehouse doors.

Two people, he corrects himself, setting his shirt aside neatly and crawling silently to the edge of the platform.

"Steve, I know you don't want to hear this," the first man says, and Bucky recognizes him now, the man with the wings from the helicarrier, "But we're grasping at straws at this point."

The other man–Rogers–Steve–doesn't reply, crouching down to look at the ground and then straightening up and staring up at the ceiling. The bird-man shrugs, and pokes around behind some old crates.

"I know," Steve says, after a long silence. The bird-man glances at him, looking surprised, and then crosses the space to rest his hand on Steve's shoulder.

Bucky sneers, heat shooting through him, and before he thinks about it he's launched himself off the edge of the platform.

He lands on the ground lightly, but his arm clatters, still hanging powerless at his side. Steve and the bird-man both turn at the sound, dropping into matching crouches. When Steve sees him, he relaxes a bit, but the bird-man doesn't move. 

"Bucky," Steve says, and it doesn't sound like a question.

Bucky feels himself start to shake, shivering the metal flaps on his arm, and he grabs it with his other hand, trying to quiet them.

Steve walks towards him slowly, and the bird-man's eyes flick between the two of them but he still doesn't move.

"We'd like to take you somewhere safe," Steve says, stopping in front of him.

"It's safe here," Bucky says.

Steve doesn't say anything, doesn't make a face or move, just watches him. Bucky's pretty content to just return his stare for however long he wants to keep it up. It doesn't feel like a stand-off, although he thinks it should be.

After a long silence, the bird-man clears his throat.

"Are you hungry, Buck?" Steve asks.

Bucky nods.

"Why don't you go get us all some food, Sam?" Steve says without turning around.

"Steve," the bird-man, Sam, says.

"We'll be fine here," Steve says, still watching Bucky.

"Okay! Okay," Sam says, shrugging, and turns, walking towards the door. Bucky doesn't move when he walks out, or when the sound of a car engine starting reaches him, or as they listen to Sam drive off. He just watches Steve.

"What happened to your arm, Buck?" Steve asks, finally, gently.

Bucky startles, and then turns quickly, trying to hide the metal arm behind his body. "It’s not mine,” he says.

Steve frowns and nods. The silence stretches. Bucky suddenly remembers he's not wearing a shirt, and that it's been a while since he washed up or brushed his hair. His eyes dart around the warehouse until they land on Steve again.

"I was supposed to kill you," he offers.

"I know," Steve says.

"I killed a lot of people."

This time Steve looks angry before he says "I know," and Bucky feels a hot wash of shame. He looks away.

"Do you remember me, Buck?" Steve asks, and Bucky blinks at the emotion in his voice. People don't talk to him like that. He remembers waiting to be retrieved, it was in a city, not English-speaking. Maybe Polish? He had snuck into a theatre to get out of sight while he waited. The people in the movie had talked like that to each other.

"Yes," Bucky says, and then, "No."

Steve frowns again.

"I knew you," Bucky says. "I think you got sick a lot, cause sometimes I worry that maybe you're sick and I'm not there to take care of you. You hated eating cold food. You used to say that was the worst thing about being on the front but it wasn't, you were just trying to cheer us up. And I think, I remember we used to go on dates?"

"Double dates," Steve says watching him closely.

"Hmm," Bucky says, noncommittal, trying to reach for the memories, but none of it's clear. "Sorry," he says, looking and Steve and getting shaky again.

"It's okay," Steve says, shaking his head.

"Um," Bucky says, staring at the ground, "Um, I think maybe something is really wrong with me."

"It's going to be okay," Steve says, and Bucky looks up just in time to see an emotion he doesn't recognize flash across the other man's face.

“Maybe I should go,” Bucky says, “Maybe I should just go out for a little while maybe.”

“No!” Steve says, and Bucky flinches. Steve flushes immediately. “Sorry, sorry, Buck. It’s just. I just found you. And I don’t want to lose you again. Please stay.”

Bucky shrugs, looking down at his feet.

“Here,” Steve says, shrugging off his jacket. “Would you like to put this on? You must be kind of chilly.” He holds it out towards Bucky at arms length.

Bucky opens his mouth to say he has a shirt, and then closes it. He leans forward and takes the jacket, still warm from Steve’s body heat, and wraps it tightly around himself. Steve smiles at him and he looks away, fussing with the buttons.

They stand there in silence for a long time, long enough that the arm starts sparking back to life.

“Excuse me,” he says carefully, and goes back up the stairs to where he sleeps. He touches his hand gently to the exposed wiring up there until it fries itself again, and then walks to edge of the platform. 

Steve’s looking up at him. “Are you going to come down?” he asks, and Bucky thinks he sounds afraid.

“I might just stay up here for few minutes.”

“Okay.”

Bucky tucks the metal hand into the jacket pocket. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asks, zipping the pocket up part way to hold the hand in place, hidden.

“Nothing, Buck, I promise,” Steve says. “We’re going to get you whatever you need, okay? I mean, if it’s alright, I want to help you.”

“I’m scared,” Bucky admits, and Steve looks up at him, lips pressing into a thin line, just as the sound of a car returning reaches them, and by the time Sam’s pulled open the warehouse door, burgers in hand, Bucky’s gone.


	4. Persistent Boner

Steve finds him again in Saskatchewan. In the North Battlefield Library, actually, and Bucky is briefly, ridiculously glad that he took out _Stars AND Stripes: Captain America’s Place in Queer Culture_ two weeks ago, and has already returned it.

“Hi Steve,” he says, because he’s coping here. He’s stopped short-circuiting the arm (although he had to borrow a small buffer from a mechanic’s shop to get the red star off) and started wearing a glove and long sleeves. He has a library card and sometimes he sleeps for almost four hours without waking up and he eats almost everyday. And he likes Saskatchewan, it feels like no one could ever get to you without you seeing them coming.

But there’s Steve, suddenly right in front of him.

“Hey Bucky,” Steve says, and just like that, Saskatchewan is over.

They go to Idaho, which seems mostly like a warmer Saskatchewan, to a farm. There are other people there, which at first confuses him, but then he realizes they’re doctors and psychologists and scientists, regardless of the way they sit around the kitchen table in flannel drinking coffee every morning. Sam, the bird-man, is there too, although he doesn’t hang around with the others as much.

Bucky has a room. His own room, right next to Steve’s.

“I hope it’s alright,” Steve says, holding the door open, “They asked me about decorating.”

Bucky peers in. It’s clean. There’s not much furniture, and what there is looks a bit off to him, the way most things do these days. He thinks it has something to do with losing so much time while Hydra had him, with the gaps in his understanding of history and design and everything else.

“I like the colours,” he says. They look familiar, and he thinks that might have come from Steve.

“They’re like your old room,” Steve says, “Or at least I tried to find the right colours.” He pauses. “It seems like yesterday.”

Bucky looks at him. He tries to think back to his room in Brooklyn but it might as well be a million years behind him.

For the most part the people there are...calm. They talk in low, measured tones and smile placidly. There’s one woman, the specialist who’s looking into Bucky’s arm, who gets a little too excited sometimes and lets the mask slip. Bucky takes to showing off the arm as much as possible, everything he can remember about how it works, just to see her, as Sam says, “geek out”.

Sam’s different. He spends the first few days watching Bucky, well, like a hawk, and then he seems to reach some kind of decision. He shows up at Bucky’s door one morning in bike shorts and running shoes. Bucky stares at him.

“Come on,” he says, “If I have to spend one more day going running with Steve I am going to encase his feet in cement while he sleeps.”

Bucky carefully keeps his face blank and goes to dig out the running shoes Steve had bought him as part of his new wardrobe. He and Sam stretch carefully on the porch and set off down the driveway. Sam’s fit, could probably outstrip most guys on active duty. Bucky matches his pace for ten minutes before he allows himself a little smile and starts to run properly.

He beats Sam back to the farmhouse by a solid twenty minutes, and when Sam shows up he’s drenched in sweat.

“God–fucking–dammit,” Sam forces out between gasps for air, “The two–of you–such–little–shits.”

They run every morning. Sometimes Steve joins them, running circles around Sam to piss him off or keeping pace with Bucky or taking off on his own route. One of the therapists – the one Bucky thinks of as the Doesn’t-Have-A-Fucking-Clue Therapist – wants him to take it easy with the exercise, says he needs to reclaim his body and stop thinking of it as a tool or a weapon. The other one – the Maybe-Knows-What-She’s-Talking-About Therapist – asks him if he enjoys running.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Okay then, run,” she says.

Sam stays out of the house for the most part – he says too many people with multiple degrees in one place give him the heebie-jeebies – and Bucky’s inclined to agree with him. He finds Sam out in the barn a lot, working out or reading or playing with the barn cats, and Sam’ll talk to him, embarrassing stories about Steve or the plots to movies Bucky’s never heard of or about working at the VA. Sam doesn’t seem to mind that Bucky doesn’t really hold up his end of the conversation.

And then there’s Steve. And that – that’s something he wishes he could bring up with the Halfway-Decent Therapist, but he can’t, because Steve isn’t Steve, not anymore, he’s _Captain America_. It might be just this side of acceptable to be a brainwashed assassin from Captain America’s past, but even Bucky could tell that “brainwashed assassin from Captain America’s past who had a very persistent boner for that star-spangled ass” was over the line.

The boners are new, too. He’s surprised, the first time he wakes up hard. He can’t remember but he doesn’t think that’s happened in a while. Mostly he tries to ignore it, but it’s hard not to draw the connection, after a week or so, between his dick’s newfound lease on life and the stupid hot fluttery sick feeling he gets around Steve.

The therapists agree that he’ll never really get his memories back. That memory is complicated and unreliable at best, and his will never be “at best”. For the most part Bucky is content with this, to let certain things fade away if they want to, but he wishes he could remember how he felt before, about Steve. If they ever talked about it.

Bucky’s sure that somewhere out there shit is happening. Shit that has a lot to do with him, and with Steve, and probably Sam. Sometimes Steve leaves for the day, but he always rushes home, fussing like a mother hen.

Bucky is incredibly bored.

He’s surprised when he realizes. It doesn’t seem like it should be boring, recovering his identity and trying to learn what an emotion is again. But it is. Feeling irreparably broken is dramatic for a while, but after a few months it’s tedious. He _always_ feels irreparably broken. Water is wet. The sky is blue. Boring.

He thinks about running away, and that’s the first time he realizes he feels trapped. It’s not that Steve ever says he has to stay there or has to talk to the therapists or anything. It’s all just there, and Steve’s there, and who is Bucky to say no. Who is Bucky to say no.

“Shouldn’t I get a job or something?” he asks Steve, sitting in the kitchen eating peanut butter sandwiches. Steve always keeps so much food in the house, and Bucky can’t decide if it’s cause he needs to eat so much or just cause he can.

“Don’t worry about it, Buck,” Steve says, shoving his own sandwich in his mouth. “Just focus on getting well.”

He gets up the next morning hours before Sam usually knocks on his door and dresses warmly. He grabs the backpack he prepared the night before and pads carefully downstairs, avoiding the security measures that Steve had carefully explained to him when they arrived. He leaves the farm at an easy, powerful run that reminds him with every step how long his body has not been his own.


	5. Us

When he sees Steve next, it’s in Brooklyn, and that feels right.

The neighbourhood is nice. There’s families, he notes with approval, big multi-generational groups of people on porches and steps and sidewalks. 

Steve is waiting on the stoop. It’s been almost a year since Bucky saw him, and he thinks he looks older. He’s called Steve from almost every city in America, and some that weren’t. Sometimes he got voicemail but mostly Steve picked up, and after the first few times he’d stopped asking where Bucky was, when he was coming back, although Bucky could still hear the questions in his voice sometimes. 

Until two weeks ago, when Bucky had interrupted Steve’s rambling about an art exhibit and said, “Get us an apartment. A proper one.”

“Us?” Steve had said, and Bucky had felt a wave of hot anxiety liquefying his guts.

“I’m coming to New York in a few weeks,” he’d forced out.

And some how he’d made it there, wanting to turn and run with every bus and train he boarded. And he’d called Steve and Steve had an address and a plaintive tone in his voice.

Steve sees him coming down the street, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t move an inch until Bucky’s standing on the step below him.

“Hi,” Steve says.

“Hi,” Bucky says.

They stand there, facing each other, until Bucky clears his throat and shifts his bag on his shoulder. “Gonna invite me in?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah.”

The apartment is pre-War, which Bucky had learned is a thing people call apartments. It’s airy and the floors creak when he walks on them and there’s a huge fat couch in the middle of the living room.

“I didn’t want to get a bunch of furniture without you,” Steve says, “But I thought I should get something.”

“I should have a shower,” Bucky says, suddenly self-conscious, pushing his hair back.

“Okay,” Steve says, quickly, and jerks into motion, leading Bucky up a short flight of stairs to the bathroom. The bathtub is huge, and both it and the shower fixture look new, and Bucky thinks Steve must have gotten them special, big enough to fit a supersoldier. 

Steve fusses around the room for a few minutes, getting out some towels and showing Bucky the soaps and shampoos he’d bought, and then he’s gone and Bucky is alone in the white room with the big bathtub.

He strips off his clothes slowly, keeping one eye on his reflection. He takes pride these days in keeping himself clean, and the overnight bus ride had left him feeling grimy. He’s skinny under his hoodie, not as muscular as he had been once, and the scar tissue on his shoulder stands out sharply. He turns, looking at the knobs of his spine, and pushes his sweats off, running his hands over the fine hair on his legs.

The shower spits out hot water as soon as he turns it on, and he steps carefully over the high edge of the tub and under the spray. The soap he’s chosen is pepperminty and clean, and he rubs the bar over his chest and arms, watching the lather sluice down over his body.

He smells each of the shampoos before he picks one that smells like coconut. He scrubs his scalp thoroughly, fingers carding through his long hair, and rinses off, standing in the hot water and letting it spatter his face and body.

He’s thinking of that phone call a few months ago. Usually Bucky would call Steve in the afternoons, drinking a cup of coffee somewhere with his back to the wall and a line of sight on every exit. But he’d been hitchhiking all day, and by the time he’d dug out his latest burner and punched in Steve’s number, it was already dark in the vacant house where he was squatting. Steve had answered, but his voice had been slurred, rough with sleep.

“It’s me,” Bucky had said, all he ever said.

There was a rustling, and Bucky imagined Steve sitting up in bed. With a sudden rush of absurd jealousy, he wondered if Steve was alone.

“Hey Buck,” Steve said.

Usually Bucky would tell Steve a few stories, people he’d met or food he’d eaten, keeping everything vague enough to protect his location. Steve would tell Bucky about mundane things, grocery shopping or running with Sam.

But that time Bucky had just let the silence stretch, listening to Steve’s breathing, rougher and harsher than it usually was, in his ear.

“Buck?” Steve asked, soft and gentle, and Bucky was on fire, his entire body feverish except for the chill metal of his arm.

“I love you, you know,” Bucky said, spit it out into the cheap plastic of the phone.

“Sure, Buck.”

“No,” Bucky said, suddenly loud, angry. “I _love_ you, you fucking asshole, and I don’t even know who I am or who you are, who’s on the wrong or right side of what, I shouldn’t even be _alive_ –”

“Don’t say that to me,” Steve interrupted, voice suddenly crystal clear, “Don’t say _that_ to _me_.”

“We’re not supposed to be here.”

“But we are.”

The line hissed and crackled for a long minute between them.

“You’re supposed to be here,” Steve said. “ _Here_.”

“You’re Captain America,” Bucky breathed. 

“I’m Steven Rogers,” Steve said, voice wet and weird, and Bucky jerked away from the phone. Steve didn’t cry. He didn’t.

Steve took a deep breath and let it out, and when he spoke again his voice was steady. “I’m Steve Rogers,” he said, “and you’re James Buchanan Barnes, and you’re my–”

Bucky waited, for whatever he was of Steve’s, but nothing came, and he hung up.

The next day he’d found the automotive shop, he thinks, looking over at his left arm that he was holding, somewhat awkwardly, mostly out of the water. The shoulder was still bright and shiny where he’d buffed off the star before, and in its place, etched into the metal, was a smaller star, surrounded by three concentric circles.

He shivered a little bit and turned off the water, which was beginning to cool down.

The towels Steve had laid out were huge and fluffy. _Good towels_ , he thought, adding them to the list of things that were better about this new world.

When he got downstairs Steve was sitting on the couch, arms resting on his knees, staring at a stack of pizza boxes on the floor in front of him. He looked up as Bucky came down the last few stairs, letting his feet fall heavily enough to be heard.

“I got food,” he said, gesturing at the boxes.

“Right,” Bucky said, fiddling with his sleeves.

Steve stood up and walked over to stand in front of him. Bucky was startled by how tall he was, and he smiled a bit, because that surprise had to come from before, when he was Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers was too small for the Army or Brooklyn winters, and then Steve kissed him.


End file.
